


give me a line (to save yourself)

by mikkal



Series: sleeping at last (oct '19) [8]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Blood and Injury, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Noctis Lucis Caelum, Whump, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 06:04:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21131888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikkal/pseuds/mikkal
Summary: Crowe gets a late night call from an injured prince and it spirals horribly from there.Whumptober 2019 Day 8: Stab Wound





	give me a line (to save yourself)

**Author's Note:**

> This is _not_ what stab wound was supposed to be but, *shrugs* ooohhh welll.

Crowe’s phone rings, and she takes a moment to stare at the unknown number on the screen. There shouldn’t _be_ an unknown number, she’s close to only a handful of people in all of Lucis at this point and only they should have her number—as she has theirs. So, yeah, there shouldn’t be an unknown number.

Scammer? Except the first three digits are Insomnia digits and, for some reason, scammer numbers originate from Cleigne.

With something heavy sinking low in her stomach, Crowe drops her half-full beer bottle in the sink and leans against the edge as she answers the phone with a sharp, “Altius.”

“_C-Crowe_?” The voice sounds painfully familiar. “_Shit_.”

She frowns. “Who is this?” she demands, except she’s already grabbing her jacket for the late fall chill and her house keys out of the re-purposed ash tray. The voice doesn’t just sound painfully familiar, it sounds like _pain_. The crackle and sob of someone trying hard to keep it together but it slowly losing the strength to even bother. “How did you get this number?”

A laugh, broken and thick with tears. “_Nyx, ah, Nyx gave it to, to me_.”

Crowe hops over the railing, skipping two sets of stairs in a single move. The landing rattles her knees, unable to roll like she should or else she’ll risk the connection with the goddamn _Prince of Lucis_. “Noctis?” she strangles out. “Holy hell. Where are you? What’s wrong?” _Why didn’t you call your Shield or your chamberlain or, hell, even Nyx_?

Noctis stutters out his location, not even two blocks from her apartment, but he doesn’t explain anything else, just tells her to “_H-Hurry_. _Please_.”

Then she hears nothing but silence. Not slowing down, she yanks her phone away to see her screen flashing a disconnected call alert. She swears and barks out a voice-to-text to Nyx, with a repeated threat at the end that boils down to bodily harm if he _dares_ call anyone else in on this.

There has to be a reason why Prince Noctis called _her_ and no one else—not Nyx, not the Marshal, not his Shield or his advisor, not even his own goddamn father the _King_, but her. Little Crowe with magic in her blood and a chip on her shoulder. She’s spoken to the kid maybe ten times since he started training with the Kingsglaives last year? He always seemed to deliberately avoid her, glancing away if they happen to make eye contact with a red face and some extra clumsiness tacked on.

She’d think he had a crush on her if she didn’t know any better.

It doesn’t take her long to skid around the last corner, dodging people as her eyes sweep up and down and across the street. Her heart lodges in her throat, her phone beeps incessantly at her with incoming texts until Nyx gives up and straight up calls her. She ignores it as she catches sight of the dingy bar the glaives only go to in the few days before their next paycheck, when their pockets are light, but their job still weighs on them.

Noctis has only been there once before Nyx and Pelna and even Libertus put their foot down and banned him from ever showing his face in this part of Little Galahd. Crowe wasn’t there for it, but apparently not even a glaive training outfit can hide who the prince is.

Crowe swears again. What _the fuck_ was Noctis thinking, coming here? Coming here _alone_?

She shoves her way around the long way before ducking into the shadows and silencing her steps. There’s an alleyway, disgusting and narrow and so, so dark, next to the bar, and she slips into it, unable to breathe over her panic. She’s not one to normally panic, not on the battlefield, not when she has fire on her fingertips and thunder in her veins, but this…this seems so much different.

“Crowe?” the little king croaks out. “Crowe, please.”

Then she’s dashing to the far end of the alley, sliding to her knees in front of Noctis. The kid’s—shit, he’s nineteen, right? Not a kid, hasn’t been for a while—the kid’s face is a pale moon in the dark, eyes like two blazing stars. There’s something wild in them, half-feral, with blood on his mouth, teeth bared in the smile coeurls give before they rip your throat out. The looks falters, though, when he clocks her, recognizing her as…an ally? A friend?

His expression crumbles and he slumps, nearly toppling over if it weren’t for her catching him. She cups his cheek, hissing at the heat that makes sweat soaked hair curl along his jaw, makes him pant with an open mouth, chest heaving. He’s pressing a hand to his abdomen, and even in the dark she can see the blood squelching between his fingers.

“Your highness,” she breathes with something like horror. “Noctis. _Noct_, why did you call _me_? You need a hospital.”

He breathes out a laugh that breaks into little _ah-ahs_ of pain. Noctis wraps his free hand around her wrist, pressing his cheek more firmly against her palm. Her phone dings again and again, his eyes drift towards the sound before he’s looking back at her, eyebrow raised.

“Nyx,” she admits.

Noctis’ lips quirk in a half-smile. “C-Call my dad,” he whispers. He chokes on the words, lurching. Blood spills from the corner of his mouth, oozing along the line her thumb makes on his face. “Traitors,” he says. “In the glaives. Luche, Tr-Tredd. They—They.” He lurches again, back arching.

Crowe moves, his grip on her falls away and his hand hits the ground limp, and she covers the hand over the wound on his stomach. Carefully, so carefully, she takes it away to reveal not just one stab wound, but the two other stab wounds he hasn’t been able to put pressure on. They’ve been steadily bleeding out. This whole time.

“_Noct_.”

She’s a _black mage_. There is no white in her bones. She’s not a healer. If anything, Libertus should’ve been the person he called even if her friend’s healing magic leaves much to be desired, it’s still better than _Crowe’s_.

“What were you thinking?” she grits out. She shrugs off her jacket and rips off her shirt, leaving her in just a tank top, and folds it carefully before less-carefully she presses the shirt against his stomach. Noctis cries out, arching, eyes rolling for a moment but then he’s visibly fighting his way into something conscious and coherent.

“D-Dad.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Okay.” Except, when she fumbles for her phone, Nyx calls at the same time. She answers it by accident with her elbow, hands instantly going pack to put pressure on his wounds. Noctis screams, low and hoarse, trying so hard to choke it back.

“_What the fuck_?” Nyx exclaims. “_Noct? Crowe?"_

“Get the king,” she orders, then rattles off what Noctis told her—and keeps telling her now in a small voice, his gaze drifting away before snapping back to her, then drifting again.

He tells her about training and being invited out, not having any reason to distrust the men and women who he’s fought with for a year now even if it’s only been a couple battles so far. He tells her about his drink tasting strange and how even though he ordered a new one and didn’t let anyone touch it, that one tasted strange too.

He tells her about the glaives taking him by the arms and dragging him into the alley, talking and joking, mocking him, revealing secrets that not only incriminate them, but also their captain. Crowe’s name. Nyx’s. Pelna. Libertus. Their names weren’t mentioned except with scorn and sneers. They were safe, they were good.

He tells them how they beat him first and left his face untouched, only because someone said it looked pretty unblemished but still twisted in pain. They beat him first, they brought out the daggers that saved his life once on the battlefield. They wanted him to die slowly, that’s why they just walked away.

On the other line, they can hear Nyx swearing and panting, his footsteps loud as he runs through the Citadel’s halls. Noctis’ voice fades at the very end, eyes half-lidded, breathing past shallows and now erratic.

Panic makes it hard to breathe where it sits in her throat and takes root in her lungs. “Noct, Noct. Listen, you can’t fall asleep,” she says over Nyx’s shouting. “Please.”

“’m tired,” he mumbles, listing towards the ground. She can’t do anything but let him, so focused on keeping the pressure on. Already her shirt is soaked through, her hands stained. His forehead presses against the nasty, wet ground and he sighs. “Crowe, ‘m dad.”

“Nyx is getting him,” she says. Tears burn and she bites the inside of her cheek, tasting blood. She has no potions in her pocket of the aether. Hers is so much smaller than, say, Nyx’s as her magical line to the king is dedicated to spells than weapons and warping.

Even if she did, it wouldn’t be enough. Not now.

But…Her eyes widen and something like hope blooms.

“Noctis,” she whispers. He murmurs something indistinct, eyes closed. “Give me a line.” They crack open now and peer up at her, confused. “Give me a line to your armory.” His is wide net, she’s seen him shove a gun in there and Argentum take it out, then the little blonde throws it back in and Scientia summons it. They can access everything Noctis has to offer. He can give that to her. “Please. _Please_. Let me save you.”

He heaves a breath. “I…I _can’t_,” he whimpers, curling around her hand. He lays on his side, exhausted and helpless. “’m tired, Crowe.”

She shakes him and he cries out weakly. She can’t apologize, not when the spark of pain brightens his eyes and some awareness comes to him. “You have to,” she snaps. “Noctis. Do. It.”

Resigned, he wraps shaking hands around her forearms, blood smearing on her skin. He takes his nails, ragged as they always are post-training, and scores deeps lines until she’s bleeding from shallow cuts. And then, their blood mixes.

Crowe doubles over as the power surges through her, Noctis murmurs ancient oaths and vows that she can barely understand. It’s so much more than the king’s, it shouldn’t be possible. But can feel it settle over her like a cloak of magic.

His eyes blaze an otherworldly blue borderline pink and she sees herself reflected back. Then, like a candle being snuffled out, Noctis passes out.

She reaches into the aether, searching. It’s so much wider and more expansive than what she knows. It takes too much time, far too much time, to find what she hopes is a potion. And, when she takes it out, she holds something that reminds her of a potion, but not.

There’s no time to hesitate.

Crowe shatters the bottle and the glass slips through her fingers like water. Green magic floods the alley way, a spring breeze curls around the prince and covers him in a blanket of green blossoms. Before her eyes, the wounds grow smaller and smaller until they’re pinpricks, color comes back to his face, and when he breathes, it’s deep and without struggle.

Nyx finds them there, both Shields and Marshal Leonis flanking him. Crowe curled over her knees in relief, laughing, as Noctis cracks a weak joke.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @mikkalia15  
twitter @mik_kal15  



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